


Those Who Return

by Imaginos_Buzzardo_Desdinova



Category: Imaginos - Fandom
Genre: Alien Visitors, Blue Oyster Cult References, Gen, Science Fiction, Transdimensional Beings, early 1900s, interdimensional beings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25421920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imaginos_Buzzardo_Desdinova/pseuds/Imaginos_Buzzardo_Desdinova





	Those Who Return

Those Who Return

Chapter One: Reunion of the Lost Children

Imaginos was unsure of what he should do. He wanted to see his human family again. Wanted to apologize for having been away for so long.

He was also worried about how much Desdinova might have poisoned their minds by now.

They had been weakened. First by the death of their only daughter, and then by the apparently permanent change of their first son into his avian form.

How could he have been so selfish? No… it was not selfishness. He truly had been unable to remember his humanity.

Then the rising evil he had scented from Desdinova as he grew from boy to man had piqued his curiosity.

Taking on Buzzardo’s form once more, he flew to the peak of the nearest mountain, bird eyes taking a peek at the world from its base to the growing town where his family lived.

He re-assumed his human form and was walking along near the docks when a woman called out to him.

“Imaginos?!”

He turned and nearly fell over. If ghosts could age, he was looking at one now. Surely, it couldn’t be her! Not after all this time!

“It’s me, silly,” she laughed. “It’s Lisa.”

“But… where were you?”

***

“I was at sea,” Lisa explained. “I got swept out to sea by the current and was found by a fishing vessel from Luxembourg.”

“But you still speak english,” Imaginos remarked. “How?” He mentally whacked himself across the back of the head as he thought ~how are you doing it?~ “And what happened to your hair? It’s so… short!”

“I’ve been to many ports all over Europe and the United States,” Lisa explained. “Life isn’t easy when you spend most of your life on a fishing vessel. The open sea is beautiful when the storms aren’t tossing you around, but the smells can go from a gentle salty smell to an odor so strong you’re sure you’ll leave your room and find that the rest of the crew have been dead for a month.”

“Nice image,” Imaginos laughed, covering his nose reflexively.

“Why didn’t you come back sooner?” Imaginos asked her. “We all thought you were dead. Desdinova has been going mad with grief. He’s already turned the world upside down in his ire.”

“Don’t be angry with me,” Lisa said. “I was too young to have any say in the matter. And anyhow, most boats don’t like having girls on board. That’s why my hair is so short. I’ve spent the last ten years as a ‘boy’.”

“Ten years,” Imaginos said, sadly. “Ten years since our family lost us. Heaven knows what pain Desdinova has caused them in his own grief. How badly he has twisted their minds.”

“And what of you?” Lisa asked. “How is you didn’t stop him?”

“I was trapped as Buzzardo for ten years,” Imaginos explained. “I suffered amnesia until very recently. I’ve got quite a family, bird-wise.”

Lisa began to laugh.

“What?” Imaginos asked.

“I’m just thinking of you as the proud papa of a clutch of eggs.”

“It’s not easy being a father bird,” Imaginos told her as they began walking away from the port. “Not all of Amenti’s eggs successfully hatched. But there was still a large amount.”

“I’m sorry about the ones who didn’t make it,” Lisa put her hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Let’s go home.”

“Assuming Desdinova has left us one,” Imaginos agreed.

Chapter Two: Coming Home

Lisa looked at her brother as they arrived at the house that neither had seen in ten years. Both of them were shaking a little. They hadn’t seen their parents in all that time. At least Lisa hadn’t. And Imaginos had been a bird for the few times they’d come to see him. They had come to visit Buzzardo at that point, not Imaginos.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Lisa said, worriedly.

“I’m scared, too, to be honest,” Imaginos admitted. “But we can’t let Desdinova continue to poison their minds if that’s what he’s been doing.”

They walked the pathway together until they came to the door. As they walked, they noticed how run-down the house looked. They wondered if the Bouchards had moved. Or if their absence had caused so much grief that they no longer cared. Or had Desdinova done something to them?

It was Imaginos who knocked on the door.

****

Abigail Bouchard was sitting in her rocking chair, her eyes on the clock. It was almost time to start making dinner.

Ten years ago she would have been making dinner for five, including a fine chocolate dessert for all of them. Especially the devil-child who had taken such a liking to it that he had forsworn the taste of soul-darkness as long as he could have it at least once a week.

But two of her children were gone. One to death and the other forever a bird, which had probably also died by now. Birds didn’t live as long as Men, that much she knew. Her husband had died the year before. Killed in an industrial accident when his grief had distracted him at the wrong time.

A sudden knock on the door surprised her out of her sad reverie. She stood up and trudged over to the door, glad of any distraction from her mounting grief. Desdinova wouldn’t be home yet. He didn’t get out of work until late at night. Working as a government page took a lot of time according to him, and he had no control of his schedule.

“I’ll be right there,” she called to the door. Finally reaching it, she pulled it open.

“Yes, can I help you?” she asked what appeared to be two young men standing on her doorstep.

“Hello,” the one with the shorter hair said in a voice that was clearly that of a woman.

“It’s been a long time,” the other said.

Abigail stared at them for a long moment, hardly daring to believe what her brain was telling her. She knew their faces. They had changed a lot, but they were still recognizable.

A smile that had not been on her face in ten years returned as she drew them into her arms.

Her children were home!  
Chapter Three: Oh! What Hath Desdinova Wrought?

Abigail Bouchard sat in her rocking chair with an expression of joy in her eyes. She still missed her late husband, but her two lost children were home.

They were no longer children, she had missed out on that. But it was still a thrill to have all three of them at home.

With tears in her eyes, she stood up and went into the kitchen to make dinner.

Lisa followed.

“Let me help you,” she offered, smiling at her mother.

While the two women were working in the kitchen, Imaginos looked around at the home that he never had a chance to grow up in. He moved from room to room, looking at everything in each one. Books, knickknacks, and furniture. There was nothing that didn’t catch his eye.

At last, it was time to sit down and enjoy dinner. Four plates were set and the three already present sat down to wait for Desdinova. By now, he would be arriving home, ready to join his lonely mother for dinner. Wouldn’t he be surprised.

But after an hour, it seemed that Desdinova would not be joining them for dinner. Disappointed, the three of them at their cooling meals and sat in the living room to await his arrival.

Finally, two hours later, the first signs of Desdinova arrived. But not the way anyone had expected.

Instead, there was an enormous explosion of darkness that seemed to snuff out every candle and put out every incandescent light all at once. The stars themselves went out, though no clouds hung in the sky. Each man and woman who emerged from their house hid their eyes in terror and either ran back inside to hide or ran mad in the streets, not knowing which way to go.

“No,” Abigail wept, “no… it can’t be Desdinova. It can’t be. I raised him to be a good boy. He’d never do this.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Imaginos said. “I know you did all you could to raise him right. I just wish I could believe it was enough.”

“Maybe it’s our fault,” Lisa suggested. “Perhaps you were so sad about losing us that you neglected him a little without realizing it.”

“I would never…” wept the Widow Bouchard. “Oh, Lisa… What will we do now?”

“There’s nothing you can do,” Imaginos told them. “I’m the one who brought Desdinova into this world. I’m the only one who can stop him.”

“You can’t…” Lisa said.

“I just got you back!” Abigail wailed.

“I’ll be fine,” Imaginos told them both. “Anyhow, it’s not going to be me who stops him. Not exactly.”

The darkness grew steadily deeper as Imaginos made his way to the source. To the epicenter where Desdinova’s madness grew and radiated off of him.

Desdinova didn’t seem to notice his brother as the darkness flowed from him like heat from the sun. It seemed endless, as if he would engulf the world in an endless night with neither moon nor stars. A night where no light would be permitted to shine.

Imaginos could not allow the people he had come to love to suffer without their beloved light. Once more he transfigured into Buzzardo, though he knew the bird’s life was nearing its end.

Buzzardo stretched his greying wings, letting go of his corporeal avian form. Then it happened. A new avian transformation. Where there had just be an old-looking hawk, a new hawk hovered, fanning its wings.

His feathers were made of sky and stars, traced by lines of black and silver. His black and silver beak and talons looked both deadly and somehow beautiful. And his black eyes glinted with the hint of tiny galaxies lost in unreachable depths.

Buzzardo let out a cry and every light, lamp, and candle that had been put out by Desdinova began to flicker.

But Desdinova was not about to give up so easily. He increased his power. The darkness stayed, though it did not extinguish Buzzardo’s stellar display.

Buzzardo flew to the nearest pool and began circling, dipping his wings into the water and stirring it until all the stars that should’ve been in the sky reflected in the pool despite their not actually being there.

He let out a cry of alarm and flew back out of the way to allow an incredible display of blue, white, and silver to emerge. It ripped through the darkness as Desdinova fought to continue to wrap the world in eternal night.

As the light grew and Buzzardo’s cries filled the skies with the stars that Desdinova had stolen, the people of the town heard the same two words in a soft chant.

“We understand.”

Chapter Four: ...And So Do I.

Buzzardo rose into the air, spiralling with his wings extended, his stellar body unraveling as it released the stars, planets, and galaxies within out into the pitch black skies, the edges of his form rapidly melting away.

“Imaginos!” Abigail cried out. “Please… Buzzardo! Don’t leave us! Let me at least have Imaginos back!”

“Desdinova,” Lisa called out. “Stop! Please! We’ll get you the biggest ice cream sundae in the world. Just stop!”

“That won’t work anymore,” Desdinova scoffed. “It just reminds me of all the times I was glossed over because our dear mum missed you two. She never cared that she still had me.”

“I cared,” Abigail told him.

“Funny how you never told me,” Desdinova said, accusingly. “Or did you think that I would even though you stopped saying it.”

“I’m sorry,” Abigail apologized. “You’re right. I was so heartbroken over Imaginos and Lisa that I stopped giving you what you needed. I ask your forgiveness, Desdinova. Please, stop this and come home.”

“It’s too late for that, mother,” Desdinova shook his head. He turned his attention back to Buzzardo, knocking the bird from the sky with an angry burst of darkness and evil magic.

As Buzzardo fell, he reverted back to Imaginos about twelve feet above the ground. It was Desdinova’s intention that the young man would be killed upon impact, or at least severely wounded.

But the visitors had other plans and as he fell, four of them emerged from their vessel and, using machines that none of the crowd could comprehend, caught Imaginos as he fell, setting him gently on the ground.

“Thank you,” Imaginos said.

“It’s the least we could do for our baby brother,” one of them told him.

“Brother?” Imaginos inquired.

“Your father was one of us,” the being said. “We approached you before, many years ago, and offered you a chance to join us. You had accepted, but the shame of Desdinova drove you from us. We stood back to give you a new chance and you did us proud.”

“I understand,” Imaginos whispered, subconsciously repeating the alien phrase. He turned to Desdinova. “No more, brother.”

Imaginos let out a burst of energy which was soon enhanced by the new people. They slowly drained Desdinova of his dark power, watching as he shrank and twisted until he was a simple, harmless, mortal child no more than four.

“I reverted to that age once,” Imaginos told the boy. “Did me no end of good.”

Desdinova huffed and stamped his foot. The evil power might have been eliminated, but he was still a grumpy child and that was something best handled by a mother.

“I’ll take care of him,” Abigail said. She looked at Imaginos who still had galaxies in his eyes. “Can you still see me with eyes like that?”

“I can,” Imaginos told her. “What do you mean?”

“I can see the universe in your eyes,” Abigail told him. “They’re beautiful.”

Imaginos nodded in understanding. Then he turned to the visitors.

“Is it time?” he asked.

“You may return with us if you choose,” the leader told him. “Or you may stay with your earthly family.”

“They know I’m different now,” Imaginos said, sadly. “And even though I saved their lives, there will be those who don’t approve.”

“We won’t let them harm you,” a man from the crowd told him. “You’ll always be welcome here.”

“In that case, I’ll stay,” Imaginos said, taking Desdinova from his mother and hugging the boy to his neck. “This little brat needs a big brother to keep him in line.”

“We’ll keep watch,” the leader said as he and the others returned to their ship and sank back into the otherworldly reflection still shining in the reflective surface of the lake. A voice added a single message.

“The starbird, Buzzardo, will always be a part of you.”


End file.
